Women continue to make progress in Mexico’s congress

The Federal Electoral Tribunal in Mexico validated the electoral process that included several local, state and federal races – including the presidency of the republic – late last week, according to several media reports.

In other words, the result that landed Enrique Peña Nieto of the Institutional Revolutionary Party has been ratified and officially the priista can be now called president-elect in Mexico.

This election period brought many interesting aspects of Mexico’s evolving political system and one of the success stories of the process was the participation of women, especially at the federal level.

Now, it was no surprise that women constituted the slight majority of registered voters, according to the information provided by the Federal Electoral Institute, or IFE.

But this majority actually translated into large participation by female voters, electoral workers and candidates, making an impact in the new congress.

According to Hilda Tellez with the National Council for the Prevention of Discrimination, or CONAPRED, “55.7 percent of voters were women (in the past election), almost 19 million, and more than half of the people working at the voting places were women.”

CONAPRED evolved from a previous commission created early during the administration of Vicente Fox back in 2001, but Tellez also cited earlier efforts that begun with a reform to the electoral code back in 1993 that allowed the implementation of gender quotas.

Now, the efforts resulting in the quota system that called for 40 percent female candidates were finally enforced in the past election thanks to a ruling of the Federal Electoral Tribunal, or TEPJF. And this quota system has been the most palpable result in the battle to increase women’s participation as elected officials.

“The quotas have been the most important factor,” said Paula Soto, director of Social and Political Participation with the National Institute of Women, or Inmujeres.

Women’s participation in the legislature that just began this weekend will “surpass 30 percent for the first time,” Soto said.

Considering that women’s representation in the lower chamber remained below 10 congresswomen from 1952 to 1964 – according to the National Institute of Geography and Statistics, or INEGI – and that the chamber will now seat 183 female representatives, the advance is important.

But while the advances engaging women in the process were visible, the road ahead continues to be filled with challenges.

Reportedly, the main political parties struggled to meet these gender quotas during the election.

“The IFE’s delay in following the tribunal’s resolution affected the way in which the political parties adhered to the gender quotas,” Soto said.

But “the political parties cannot presume innocence either,” because they were very aware of the quotas for a very long time, Soto also mentioned.

And while Tellez with the CONAPRED said that there was only one registered complaint at the voting places in which a “young disabled woman was denied her right to vote,” other political games affected female candidates during campaigning.

“Off course there were acts of discrimination toward the registered female candidates,” said Soto who was following the road of some of the female politicians.

There were cases of “withholding resources for the campaigns” and “declining to participate in the campaigns of women candidates” by those male politicos of the same party and even cases were male politicians decided to campaign in favor of political adversaries, according to Soto.

A possible factor in connection to this backlash was the enforcement of the quota system, but wasn’t limited to this issue.

The most high-profile case involving this “political treason” played in presidential campaigns within the National Action Party. In this case an ex-party Chairman Manuel Espino and then former President Vicente Fox decided to campaign in favor of Peña Nieto – a real slap to the efforts of the panista Josefina Vázquez Mota, the first woman with a real chance of winning the presidency.

But still Mexican women drag many long and outstanding issues. Back in 2010, a national survey on discrimination reveled that about 7.1 percent of women continued to ask for permission to vote for a candidate the issue is even a larger problem in indigenous communities.

The percentage of women who ask for permission to vote “duplicates among women who speak an indigenous language, reaching 15.8 percent,” Tellez said.

And this situation “is an important part of the inequality (women) have to with,” commented Tellez, while recalling that now about 70 percent of women can exercise the right to vote.

And while a broad measurement of the results obtained by the CONAPRED since its creation continues to be a work in progress, Tellez added that “the council has a larger visibility in the public and news media agenda.”